Faithful to Scripture. Relevant to the Culture.

A few weeks ago I had a class called Evangelism and Discipleship in Context. The class was about how to take the gospel into different cultures without mixing our own culture into it. Maybe it sounds simple, but this is actually an incredibly hard thing to do. There are often things that we consider biblical- such as the way that we do church- which are actually cultural things. One specific example is prayer. We are commanded in the bible to pray. That is absolutely biblical and universal. But there's no mandate in scripture about whether we should pray with our eyes open or closed. That's cultural. Sometimes it's very hard to distinguish the difference.

It's very common for missionaries to enter other cultures with great intentions to spread the gospel, but in reality they end up spreading their culture instead. This is bad because the local people start believing that they have to give up their culture and traditions in order to become like the missionary. Most people don't want to do this, so it ends up hindering the gospel instead of advancing it.

In Thailand this is a big problem. There have been missionaries in Thailand for about 200 years, yet less than 1% of the population knows the Lord. Something is wrong with this picture. I'm sure there are many factors contributing to this problem, but I think a big one is a lack of contextualization. Most Thai people think that Christianity is a farang (foreigner) religion. I can understand why. Nearly everything I have seen in Thai Christianity is done in a Western way. They sing worship songs that were translated from English into Thai. The style of their sermons and church services are exactly like America. It's even common for them to use pictures of white people, rather than Asians, on power points in church. Through all of these things, churches are unintentionally communicating that Thai people must adopt Western culture in order to be saved. It should not be this way!

So why is this happening? I often hear the phrase "To be Thai is to be Buddhist." Buddhism is deeply rooted and intertwined with Thai culture. It's nearly impossible to distinguish what is Buddhist and what is Thai in the culture because they are so mixed together. Many Thai Christians want to be very careful not to do anything that appears to be Buddhist, but because there's no clear separation, they end up rejecting their entire culture.

However, one beautiful thing about the gospel is that it was designed to work in every culture, even in Thailand. Many things in Thai culture, and even in Buddhism, are not actually bad or sinful. What if we could redeem and transform some of these practices to be used to glorify the Lord? For example, a common way for Thai Buddhists to worship and pray is to burn incense. Incense is not inherently bad. For us Western Christians it may seem weird because we're not used to it, but it's not necessarily a sin to burn incense. So what if Thai Christians were able to take that cultural practice and use it to worship the Lord instead of idols? Personally, I think it could be a wonderful and beautiful thing. Maybe more people would be open to the Lord because they could worship Him in a way that they already know. Maybe it could start changing the mindset that Christianity is only for farangs.

Obviously things like this need to be approached very carefully. We never, ever, want to compromise biblical truth in order to be relevant to a culture. So there are certainly some practices in Thai culture and Buddhism that we should not attempt to adapt to Christianity. However, like I explained before, I think there is often more flexibility than we realize in how we can worship and express our faith. We should not be quick to assume that something is wrong or bad simply because it is different than what we are used to. Different cultures should have the freedom to worship the Lord in different ways. In the bible, Gentiles were not forced to be circumcised and become Jewish in order to be saved. In the same way, other cultures should not be forced to become Western as a requirement for salvation.

There is definitely a problem in how the gospel has been presented in Thai society, but it is encouraging to realize that missionaries and churches all over the country are starting to recognize and change this. Little by little, adjustments are being made to try to make Thai churches truly Thai. For example, in April there was a major Thai holiday called Songkran. Although this holiday has a lot of ties to Buddhism, I know of a few churches who decided to have simple Songkran ceremonies during their service. The ceremony itself was not Buddhist. It was about young people honoring their elders and the older people blessing the younger. These churches performed the ceremony in a way that honored the Lord as well as their culture. It was wonderful. I am hopeful that more things like this will happen in future years. I pray that Christian workers in Thailand will have wisdom on how to present the gospel in a way that stays faithful to scripture yet relevant to the culture.

Songkran ceremony at my church . . .